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Nearby Theaters

The Capitol Theater was a smaller house, long and fairly narrow. Built in the 1920’s it had a major do over in the late-1950’s, glass doors, streamlined front. It was owned and operated by the Dipson chain of Batavia, NY from at least the early-1940’s on.

The Capitol Theater was inundated in the 1972 flood and was remodeled. The Chemung Canal bank aquired it in the 1980’s for an expanded parking lot. I remember it always featured films for a non-youth audience, those played the Elmira Theater across the street or the Colonial Theater two blocks west.

The listing of 1500 seats for this theatre is way off; it was a fairly small building, all mezzanine and no balcony. I think that at maximum it probably held 500, probably less.

Dipson use to book all the bigger prestige pictures into this house, which I always thought was strange, given that they also had the much larger Elmira just down the street. * Oliver!, Fiddler on the Roof, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather, Rocky * all played long runs here.

Last renovation was 1980; the theatre was closed for three weeks for new seats, new projection and new Dolby stereo sound prior to reopening for * The Empire Strikes Back*.